Movie Reviews by Dennis Dermody
Dennis Dermody
September 24, 2021
Movies
It’s fall and The New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center is back, and not virtual (a word I’ve come to loathe). In the 70s every fall I would hitchhike to New York from Provincetown, Mass. with my tickets for…
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Dennis Dermody
September 20, 2021
Movies
Heartbreaking documentary by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri about Bjorn Andresen, who won the part of Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 Death in Venice. Visconti went on a world-wide search for the beautiful object of obsession for Dirk Bogarde’s Gustav…
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Dennis Dermody
September 16, 2021
Movies
Japanese director Sion Sono has always pushed the envelope in his own crackpot way. One thinks back to Suicide Club with all those Japanese schoolgirls merrily leaping to their death in front of a train; or forever-growing killer hair in…
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Dennis Dermody
September 12, 2021
Cult
Starting in 1995 the US Post Office released a series of “Legends of Hollywood” stamps that were a thrill for collectors and fans. From James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Alfred Hitchcock to Shirley Temple there…
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Dennis Dermody
September 7, 2021
Blu-Rays
This month of Blu-ray releases feel like a great big pile of deliriously deranged birthday party gifts. From Luchino Visconti’s wildly controversial The Damned; a pristine version of an early film by Francis Ford Coppola– Dementia 13; a fabulous box…
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Dennis Dermody
August 30, 2021
Cult
Watching Luke Kirby’s extraordinary performance as serial killer Ted Bundy in No Man of God got me to thinking of other actors who were able to sharpen their acting skills portraying murderers. It must be wild channeling some twisted mind…
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Dennis Dermody
August 26, 2021
Movies
In the new film No Man of God, Elijah Wood plays real-life FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier, who was a former guidance counselor recruited into the elite Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI. He is given the unenviable task of…
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Dennis Dermody
August 23, 2021
Movies
Annette, the dazzling new film by Leos Carax (Holy Motors), now streaming on Amazon Prime, is about the tumultuous love affair between an edgy, stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and a renowned opera singer (Marion Cotillard). It’s done as a crackpot…
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Dennis Dermody
August 17, 2021
Cult
There are many news stories about post-Covid air travel. Particularly about unruly passengers punching the flight crew for having the temerity to tell them to buckle their seat belt or wear a face mask. Jean-Paul Sartre was right: “Hell is other…
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Dennis Dermody
August 13, 2021
Blu-Rays
Out now in a gorgeous-looking Blu-ray from Code Red/Kino Lorber is Guyana, Cult of the Damned, a wonderfully sleazy 1979 film by Rene Cardona Jr. chronicling the Reverend Jim Jones and the mass suicide in South America. But hold on…
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